Given its massive popularity, there is little surprise that iPad could take esoteric tarot reading and astronomy and make it trendy. Sandra Smiley tells us why e-readers won’t give more currency to the classics.

The e-reader’s success at the tills this holiday season has had pundits auguring a transformation in the way we factotums read – with the huge number of free classics available in electronic libraries, they argue, people will opt for literature’s opera magna rather than paying for the latest potboiler.